These Things Take Time
by StarVix
Summary: It's one thing to serve God in a dimension tailor made for it. But now Sonic's back in his own dimension, and he has to deal with nonbelieving friends, hard life choices, a recovering stalker-I mean, Amy Rose-a new, apparently French, pastor, saving the world, and the fact that he and Metal Sonic are sharing thoughts and memories. What's a new believer to do?


**Written because I Just Thought of It And It Sounds So Cool. This takes place as soon as I Still Believe ends and will take us through I Surrender All and More Than Useless, which I will update again in a week or so. It deals with Sonic simply dealing with day to day things, trying to learn about his faith and what he believes and what God wants while trying to save the world. This story deals with: faith, stalkers, saving the world, game adaptions, where did Antoine come from and where did Pastor Jack go?, revenge, forgiveness, grace, humor, romance, and Eggman's Robots. If any of that catches your attention, then this is the story for you. If not...oh well. I tried.**

**PS. If you're trying to get my permission for a story using my Christian Sonic universe, then you have my permission to do that, too. Disclaimer: I don't own it.**

**Chapter One**

**Just Another Boring Day**

**Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches.—1 Corinthians 7:17**

**So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.—2 Thessalonians 2:15 **

**This is your life  
Are you who you wanna be  
This is your life  
Are you who you wanna be  
This is your life  
Is it everything you've dreamed that it would be  
When the world was younger  
And you had everything to lose **

_**This is Your Life, **_**Switchfoot**

A month ago, Sonic thought when he had time to reflect, things were so much simpler.

A month ago, Sonic had been trapped in some freaky, medieval alternate dimension, where he and everyone else he had known were either following God—better known simply as the King there—or was trying to kill him. He had had no other duty other than learning more about his King and training to serve Him. It had been so _easy _for him to know what the right thing in any situation was and how to deal with it. And then he had to go back to the Real World.

In the Real World, the only person he knew that was his age and serving the Lord wasn't so much of a friend as a recovering stalker, which admittedly made him a touch uncomfortable to be around her.

In the Real World, he had a job, bills, and responsibilities he had to juggle in between learning more about the Lord, and he had to learn what he had to change in his lifestyle in order to serve God and how he should do that while still fulfilling all his responsibilities.

In the Real World, the lines between right and wrong sometimes seemed blurry or even non-existent to him. The Bad Guys didn't come up to him and say, "I'm going to kill you if you don't recant," and the Good Guys weren't always dressed in shiny white armor.

In the Real World, he had to go back to his same old job, his same old routine, his same old commitments, and still try to learn how to obey God while doing the same old thing he had always done.

"Hold still you moronic blue rat, so I can vaporize you!"

Of course, the 'same old grind' took on a completely different meaning when Sonic was using it, but still. The fact was, how do you go back to the way things were without going back to the way _you _used to be?

These were deep questions, questions that Sonic needed to find answers to in order to live his faith. But not while he was dodging a giant, egg-shaped super weapon that was currently trying to vaporize him.

Instead, he was busy running around the giant thing—it sort of looked like a cross between an egg, a robot, and a bald monkey, so he didn't know _what _to call it—looking for weak points. Eggman would always have weak points in his weapons. Usually they glowed a bright red or a yellow color, just screaming, "Spin dash me here!" And yet, Eggman was constantly surprised he would always lose. Go figure.

Trying to break up the monotony of the moment, since this was pretty much the same boss fight he did nearly _every single day_, Sonic started trying to hold a conversation with the man who was currently trying to kill him dead. "So, what's this one called? The Egginator? The Yolkitron? The Doom Egg—wait, you already did that. Oh, I know! The Giant Robot Who Sort of Kinda But Not Really Resembles an Egg a Little!"

"Shut up, shut up!" Eggman howled at him, punching random buttons um…randomly. Or something. Actually, he kind of looked like he needed a few blood pressure meds, because Sonic was positive that purple was not a natural color for a human. It looked good on Eggman though, kind of made him look like an eggplant.

Oh, Lord, did he just think that? He needed a vacation.

But even though his brain was in 'what the…' mode today, Eggman was still as pathetically easy to defeat as ever. He ran in a large circle around the thing, dodged a few badly-aimed lasers, and spin dashed a large, glowy, yellow circle in its middle about three times, and wallah! Game over, Robotnik.

All that was left to do now was the mandatory gloating.

"Geez, Eggman, it's like you're not even trying anymore," Sonic taunted his fallen foe as the man struggled to get out of the rubble of his own weapon. Again. "Not that you ever tried very hard in the first place. But today was just sad. Hey, on the bright side, you just got a new record for losing quickly."

This was the part where Eggman usually screamed and ranted about how much he hated Sonic, but instead, he started to chuckle. It was the kind of chuckle that slowly built into a chortle, and then became a full-fledged, manically creepy, guffaw. It made the quills on the back of Sonic's neck stand up, because not only was that a really creepy sound, it also never meant anything good for him.

"Have I lost, Sonic?" Eggman asked, with a disturbingly wide grin on his face. "Have I?"

Sonic took a step back and opened his mouth to respond, but he never got the chance. Instead, something rammed into him from behind and he yelped as his feet were knocked out from under him. The force of the impact made him roll for a few feet, but finally he stabilized enough to find the culprit of the sudden impact was none other than his most hated foe.

Metal Sonic.

"You!" Sonic yelled at the metal menace. "I've smashed you a thousand times in a thousand different ways already! Why won't you stay dead?"

Metal Sonic didn't reply, but then, it rarely did, except to say such inspirational words as, "Die, hedgehog," or "I'm going to rip off your face!" with other such lovely sentiments like that. Instead, it simply fell into a battle-ready stance, motioning for Sonic to come after it with one of its clawed hands.

Sonic clenched his fists, mentally preparing himself for the battle ahead. Unlike Eggman, Metal Sonic had intelligence—I mean, _artificial_ intelligence—and therefore it would often change its attack style as Sonic attacked it. The longer this battle lasted, the less chance Sonic had of winning.

The two had been enemies for so long that it was impossible to tell who struck first anymore; both seemed to strike at the same time, regardless of who made the first motion. Their movements were a blur to the untrained eye; yet each combatant could see the attacks of their foe and counter with graceful precision.

Metal Sonic drew first blood in this battle; the tips of its claws grazing across Sonic's chest as the organic hedgehog moved a fraction of a second too slow to avoid it. But Sonic quickly regained his balance by sweeping Metal Sonic's legs out from under him and then stomping on the metal menace's right arm so hard its fingers dented. Metal Sonic was swift to recover though, and his left hand morphed into a gun that shot some sort of laser beam that Sonic had move fast in order to avoid.

Sonic had fought Metal Sonic in many places before: the top of a live volcano, on a ship flying thousands of miles above ground, on a large metal building in the middle of a lightning storm. But today, he was not battling the robot in any sort of dangerous location; he was fighting it in a field of wildflowers on a clear, warm, sunny spring day. And so he was not focused on his surroundings, because he was so intent on destroying this metal doppelganger of his once and for all.

In retrospect, that was probably a very bad idea.

He was so focused on the robot he never realized it was simply a distraction. He never noticed Eggman effortlessly climbing out of the rubble that had supposedly pinned him down, never saw the weapon that the doctor was aiming at him, never wondered why Metal Sonic suddenly stopped, causing Sonic to stop as well in order to attack him.

In fact, the only thing Sonic noticed was that stars were suddenly flooding his vision, and then everything went completely dark for a very long time.

* * *

Metal Sonic did not understand why his creator wasn't killing the hedgehog now that it was in his grasp. Wasn't killing this annoying pest the sole purpose of his existence, and now when he _finally _had it right where he wanted it, he wasn't allowed to finish it off?

"Why are we doing this again?" he asked as Robotnik hooked up a large power cord to his CPU, before hooking it to a large helmet-thing that he attached to the hedgehog.

"Because last night I realized: it does us no good to kill Sonic, not when he has so many powerful friends who are more than willing to do his job for him! There's the fox, the echidna, his pink girlfriend, Shadow…they're like a Hydra; if I cut off one head, I'll just have to deal with seven more. And so, I'm not cutting off the head," Eggman replied as he finished hooking Sonic up. "Instead, I'm making the head work for me."

"And I have to do this because…"

"I thought I already explained this to you," Eggman griped.

"Pretend I wasn't listening."

Eggman gave his machine an incredulous look. "Why on earth would I do that?"

"Because I wasn't," Metal Sonic shrugged.

Eggman scowled at him, but continued with his convenient plot explanation. "For the last time, you and that hedgehog both have very similar thought processes, because I designed you to think like him—"

"How do you know that?"

"What?"

"I said, how do you know that?" Metal Sonic waved his arms around as he tried to explain his point of view. "Have you ever been able to study his brain? See exactly how it works?"

"Well, no…but…"

"Then how do you _know _we think alike? Maybe we come up with the same conclusion, but our thought processes are completely different. Maybe I decide to mock you because I think it's a way to express my admiration of you, but he does it to make fun of you. How would you know?"

"I…I just do, ok?" Eggman snapped. "Now shut up! I'm going to link your CPU with his brain so that you will be able to hear his thoughts and know every move he and his annoying friends will make."

"But won't he be able to hear my thoughts?"

"No, you're a computer. It's completely different," Eggman assured him. "And if it isn't, I'll just destroy you and make another robot. It's not like you're not expendable or anything."

"Gee, thanks," Metal Sonic muttered. Eggman finished plugging everything up and stood back with a large red button that would supposedly turn the contraption on.

"Now, you'll probably shut down temporarily after I start this," he warned the machine. He reached for the button, then paused. "By the way, _do _you mock me as a warped way of showing your admiration towards me?"

"No. I mock you because it's funny."

Eggman glared at the machine and pushed the button. Electricity arched from Metal Sonic to Sonic and back again, causing Metal Sonic to overload. "I'm glad you're shutting down then, you jerk," Eggman muttered.

* * *

Of all the things he thought his brother would bring home, a live chicken wasn't on the list. Although, he mused, it probably should have been.

"Metal Knuckles," he heard his creator, Dr. Robotnik say incredulously as he stared at the chicken happily clucking on the table. The inventor was sitting down at one end of said table, a napkin under his chin and a fork and knife in his hand. "What did you just put on my table?"

"You told me to bring home chicken," Metal Knuckles pointed out.

"I didn't want a _live _chicken! I just wanted you to drop by KFC and grab a bucket of _dead _chicken!"

"Why would you want a dead chicken? It'll just stink the place up," Metal Knuckles protested.

"Well, what am I supposed to do with a _live _chicken?" Robotnik yelled at his robot as the chicken in question stared at him, apparently unconcerned that they were discussing his chicken fate.

"If you _really _want it dead, I can fix it," he heard himself say, as his hand morphed into his favorite weapon.

"What? NO! Don't shoot it!" Robotnik yelled in alarm, the tone of his voice causing the chicken to flap his wings and flutter off the table.

"Why not?" he demanded to know, wanting very much to shoot something. He'd had a hard day, and shooting things were therapeutic.

"It's just…he looks at me with those sad little eyes…" Robotnik muttered, almost under his breath as he looked at the chicken. Then he realized that his robots were staring at him and he straightened up. "I mean…because I can use this chicken to help further my schemes!"

"_Really_…" Sometimes he marveled at how much sarcasm he could get into his voice.

"Yes," Robotnik's 'yes' sounded very squeaky, as if he was just realizing how stupid his excuse sounded. Nevertheless, he stayed the course. "It will uh…improve my designs."

"What are you gonna do, make a bunch of egg and chicken related doomsday devices?"

"So what if I am?" Robotnik was definitely getting defensive. He thought about pointing out that now his creator _had _to make a bunch of egg-related doomsday devices just to save face, and wouldn't _that _do wonders for his reputation? He could see the headlines now: Dr. Egg Guy strikes again!

Actually that didn't have the ring to it that he'd like. Something more along the lines of 'Eggman' would work better. Yeah, that'd be funny to see in a news headline.

Robotnik cleared his throat, and he belatedly realized his creator was saying something and he wasn't paying attention. Not that he cared, it was just a fact, that's all.

"…So take this chicken and make him a chicken house, pronto," Eggman—Robotnik was telling him. He shrugged and picked up the clucking chicken, taking him out of the room.

* * *

When Sonic woke, there was a pounding sensation in his forehead that felt like tiny dwarfs with jackhammers were trying to get out of it. He moaned and cracked his eyes open to see that he was in a hospital bet, and Tails was sound asleep on a chair next to him.

Sonic couldn't remember how he had gotten into the hospital or why he was in one. The only thing on his mind at the moment was that _apparently_, he had just dreamed he was Metal Sonic and was discussing the fate of a _chicken_ with Eggman, of all things. It was the weirdest and most detailed dream he had ever had.

There was only one thing to do: Sonic closed his eyes and prepared to go back to sleep. "Well, that dream was unnecessarily vivid," he muttered to himself as he fell asleep again.

* * *

He could not believe that his own little brother, the child he had taken in out of the kindness of his heart and raised as if he were his own flesh and blood, could betray him like this. He glared at the cameras as if that would make them go away, and then turned to his brother with his best puppy dog face. "Tails, I don't wanna do this," he whined.

"I know, Sonic, but you need to work on your public image," Tails replied, firm in his decision. "It's only a five minute interview. You'll survive."

A stage hand poked his head backstage. "Two minutes, Mr. Hedgehog," he said before disappearing again.

"My life force is fading by the second," he gasped dramatically. "What am I even supposed to do, Tails?"

"All you have to do is talk about how Dr. Robotnik isn't a threat because you can more than handle anything he can dish out," Tails replied confidently.

"Huh," He rolled his eyes; he might be a genius, but Tails could be deceptively childish at times. "Hey, speaking of Ro-butt-nik, have you noticed he's been making an awful lot of egg-related doomsday devices lately?"

Tails stared at him, as if he couldn't comprehend how that made any difference in the grand scheme of things, but then he shrugged. "I guess so," he admitted.

"I've trashed like, five this month," he continued, not caring to note his brother's lack of enthusiasm on the subject. "Why eggs? Of all the things to get stuck on, he's inventing these weird egg devices, and I mean this is talking about a guy who's had a _lot_ of weird inventions. Remember that giant robot crab thing?"

"I think you'd better focus on the interview, Sonic," Tails muttered, rolling his own eyes now.

But he wasn't listening anymore. Instead, he was thinking about funny egg-related names he could call Robotnik on national television. Like…Dr. Egg Guy. No wait, Eggman! Boy, wouldn't _that _look funny in newspaper print?

"Mr. Hedgehog? You're on," someone called, and he rushed to the interview, eager to share his observations on Eggman's character. He couldn't wait to see the news tomorrow.

* * *

Metal Sonic woke abruptly, to find that someone—most likely Eggman—had taken him back to the base, and unceremoniously dumped him on the ground. Well, at least he knew Eggman's crazy scheme had worked. He was officially getting Sonic the Hedgehog's thoughts and memories. Apparently, he had just seen the day Sonic had created Robotnik's well-known moniker, Dr. Eggman.

Still…Metal Sonic sighed as he got off of the floor and stumbled off to find his recharge bay. "That was unnecessarily vivid," he muttered to himself.


End file.
